In 2015, Idaho-based Semiconductor giant Micron hired Trevor Schulze as its first ever Chief Information Officer. Prior to acquiring the role at Micron, Schulze had worked in top level positions for well-known Semiconductor and Cloud companies such as Broadcom, AMD, and Cisco. Within months of working at Micron, Schulze realized the importance of Big Data for business and its potential to enhance profitability. Micron was in the early stages of evaluating and figuring out new ways to harness the power of data-driven approaches. With this in mind Schulze decided to make a collective effort in the company by forming a new team fully dedicated to Big Data and its Enterprise applications, which he named the “Enterprise Analytics And Data IT Group”. (Not sure if you should use ‘Enterprise Analytics and Data IT Group’)

In a recent interview with Forbes, Micron’s ex-CEO Mark Durcan claimed that due to the efforts of Enterprise Analytics and Data Group, Micron is now in a position to provide innovative data-driven technologies that will help its customers to take full advantage of their data assets. Durcan said that Trevor Schulze and his team are providing Micron with key data insights that will play a crucial role in helping the company to drive its business forward.

Trevor Schulze then began a transformation from localized point solutions to integrated insights through utilizing Big Data in the company. (I don’t feel like that information is necessary – but up to you). Micron’s new CIO also formed a special enterprise data science team in order to develop a collaborative platform for data scientists and business intelligence personnel at Micron. This synergy dwindled time, efforts and costs. Micron also decided to make use of embed architects and data engineers to help reduce data acquisition and preparation time. As a result Big Data increased the efficiency of the company in the data sector by an impressive 50 per cent.

The next logical step in the Big Data revolution at Micron was to bring all other divisions within the business that were lacking data science expertise into the loop; these sectors included Supply Chain and Procurement. Through focusing on the implementation of greater data-driven processes and strategies Micron could harness the potential to bolster productivity and efficiency in these sectors dramatically.

Consequently, the enterprise data science team at Micron came up with new solutions that created greater insight into product availability, predict customer demand trends and optimize inventory management systems. Through incorporating the use of Big Data, Micron’s demand forecast accuracy improved by 10-15 per cent.

In order to spread awareness regarding the power of Big Data and data science, Schulze asked the enterprise data science team to provide (data science has been repeated too often) educational sessions to stakeholders of all levels at Micron.

Schulze believes that the demand for data science backed solutions is set to soar in the near future and Micron was able to adapt and integrate the power of Big Data earlier than its competitors. By implementing these progressive data-based approaches and solutions Micron managed to save a whopping $80 million in just one year.

It is due to this truly innovative Big Data revolution carried out by Trevor Schulze at Micron that Forbes magazine has chosen to award him the 2017 CIO of the year award.